Beware - P2P (limewire, emule etc.) Programs and Identity Theft

This is important information for my blog followers, or casual visitors.

Recently FBI in Denver Colorado investigated a suspicious person and found personal information from 75 persons which they stole identities and scammed thousands of dollars, plus ruining their credit rating.

Problem with Limewire, and similar P2P programs, is they default their download/upload folder in your computer under the common folder "Documents" which many people use to store all kinds of information and share out on a home LAN, or actually inadvertently share out. Then everything in the "Documents" folder is accessible. See this Youtube video for a start then I will explain how to avoid this trap. BTW Torrent programs work differently which I will also explain after this video.

First off, these P2P programs should not use the Windows default "Documents Folder" to host their "Limewire etc. folder which is shared with the world but they do by default.  Sharing out the "Documents" folder for your home or office LAN's is not uncommon either. Heck I do it.


Best solution, I think, using Limewire (my daughter's favorite for music) as example. If you have a second partition - Lets say D drive (you can create one) move the limewire folder found under "Documents" to "D" Drive. You can usually drag and drop.  (actually move the Limewire folder anywhere away from "Documents" Folder). Now Limewire does not know where the folder is any  longer. That's OK - just go to Limewire Tools, Options, click the download or transfer tab and Browse for new folder location on D drive. Limewire will not like this and warns you, but ignore the warning - it should work fine. As final step be sure  Limewire folder is deleted for your Documents file. No risk any longer just don't share out D drive. And I have seen some people share out their entire C drive. That is a really big NO NO!
 
Torrent downloads are different and not a risk. Reason is the folder is not open to public, only a specific file you are "seeding". Meaning you are allowing others to upload the specific file (in my case movie) only as long as I allow.